by Hank Early
“And don’t forget that the love of a father is crucial. Boys have to make a connection with male role models before it’s too late,” Blevins said. The way he said it made it clear he’d recited that line over and over again.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
We shook hands all around, and Harden opened his office door to let us out. “You can find your way out?”
“Sure,” I said, thankful they weren’t walking us to our car. I wasn’t done yet.
“Can you distract the girl at the desk?” I whispered to Ronnie.
“Sure. Easy.”
“Do it. I’m heading to the stairs. After I’m clear, get the truck”—I handed him the keys as we made our way down the hallway—“and meet me out by the gate.”
“When?”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“What if you’re not there?”
“I’ll call you if something changes.”
“Okay, got it.”
When we made it to the desk, I turned toward the exit but walked slowly. Ronnie went toward the front desk. Once I heard him talking, I veered toward the stairs, moving quickly and quietly. I opened the door and disappeared into the stairwell.
14
I had no idea what I hoped to find upstairs. If anything, I just wanted a closer look. For some reason, Blevins had called the dead man’s phone and written him a letter, and I would be damned if I could let that go. They were literally the only two things I had to go on—other than the bookmark—and I meant to look into them as exhaustively as possible.
The second floor was made up of classrooms. There seemed to be only one class in session. An elderly man wearing a sweater vest sat perched on a stool in front of eight boys—all dressed in the same blue jeans and blue shirts—mumbling something about a proof. The boys looked extremely bored, but they didn’t look particularly troubled. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. They all looked troubled, but they didn’t look like troublemakers. Maybe it was because they were all dressed the same, but none of them looked the least bit threatening.
I wandered into one of the empty classrooms. Based on the writing on the chalkboard, I assumed it was Blevins’s. The chalkboard read Check your facts … Climate Change is a THEORY not proven science.
Yep, I was still in Coulee County.
I looked at his desk, the computer sitting there. The screen saver said Let boys be boys today and they will be men tomorrow.
I wiggled the mouse and his desktop came up. Maybe I could find some record of Joe’s attendance at the school. I had to assume that he’d once been a student. Otherwise, why the connection with Dr. Blevins? I made a quick scan of the files on the desktop. There were only four, one labeled junk and three labeled untitled. I clicked on one of the untitled folders and found it filled with documents. I skimmed the list. Each document was titled with an initial and a name. I clicked one of them at random.
Doug Knowles
11/3/00
Age: 17
Status: Floor three
Parents: Marjorie Knowles
Status: Supportive
Complaints: One call, 3/6/18. Asked about rumors with Josh H.
Response: H. returned call. Discussed how we are aware of said rumors but are handling it with therapy.
Below this were two photos of Doug. One showed a happy kid, his hair dyed green, laughing at a football game with some of his friends. The second showed him dressed all in blue, not smiling, standing erect, his head shaved, his eyes filled with a sadness that jumped through the computer screen and gripped me somehow. Jesus, what were they doing to these kids?
I heard someone coming down the hallway. Hopefully it would be someone who hadn’t seen me yet. If it was Blevins or Harden, I was screwed. Worst case scenario, I could hide under the desk, fight my way out if necessary.
I closed the file, scanning the rest of the names. One near the bottom caught my eye.
E. Walsh
My mouth fell open. Surely not. It couldn’t be. I opened the file and saw it was much more expansive than Doug’s. That was all I had time to see before the footsteps drew even closer.
I fumbled with the mouse, trying to close the window and get under the desk, but I was too late.
“Who are you?”
It was a kid, dressed like the others I’d seen except for one difference. The collar on his shirt was white. He seemed a little older than the other boys I’d seen, too, which led me to believe he was some sort of prefect, or maybe an RA.
“Tech support,” I said, reaching for the front of my shirt where an ID badge might have been hanging. “Oh, forgot my badge.”
“We’ve never had any tech support here before.”
“Well, Dr. Blevins asked me to come up and look at his computer. He’s downstairs if you want to talk to him.”
The kid eyed me suspiciously. “What’s your name?”
“Preston Argent,” I said, without missing a beat.
He nodded. “I’m going to go check with him right now.”
“Go ahead. I wanted to ask him something about his computer anyway. So send him on up, if you don’t mind.”
The kid walked out, moving purposefully down the hall. I opened the Walsh file and read from the top.
Edward Walsh
1/3/03
Age: 15
Status: Floor four
Parents: Jeb Walsh / Eleanor Walsh—divorced
Status: Father supportive / mother combative
Complaints: Multiple calls, log below
Response: See log
I scrolled down past paragraphs that were simply labeled Notes. I found a chart listing the date of each of his mother’s calls and visits and how they had been handled. Most of them had been handled in the same way—contacted Jeb.
Only two were different, and they’d come recently, just last month. Referred her to Sheriff Argent.
I tried to see what the complaint was, but the section of the chart under Complaint said the same thing all the way down— General.
I knew my time was limited, so I closed the file and headed out into the hallway. Just then the elevator at the end of the hall dinged. I ducked back into the classroom and jogged over to the bank of windows on the far wall. I opened the first one I came too and pushed the screen out. It fell into the garden below.
And what a garden it was. Every manner of plant and flower grew below, each contained within a planter or its own little walled-off section. There were fishponds, benches, stone pillars, and brick walkways that formed a labyrinthlike pattern among the plants.
Leaning out the window, I saw I was looking at about a twenty-foot drop into one of the fishponds. It was hard to tell how deep it was, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. The footsteps were drawing closer.
Swinging my feet up through the open window, I held onto the window frame with both hands as I eased myself down as far as I could before letting go.
When I did let go, the speed of the fall took my breath away. I had just enough time to look down and see I was indeed going to hit the water before I was there, stabbing through the dark pond, feetfirst. I braced myself for impact, and it came, but the water was deep, deep enough to slow my descent. My boots hit the bottom, and the impact rocked my knees and my hips, but nothing felt broken or too badly injured. I swam up, toward the sun, and reached for the pond’s edge. I pulled myself out and began to run toward the back of the garden. I ran through the gate and kept going onto a broad expanse of green lawn. Several boys stood to my left in straight rows while a young man spoke to them. I kept running. Only the boys saw me, as the man’s back was to me.
A line of trees lay in front of me, and I didn’t stop running until I’d broken through the tree line and lost myself in the woods.
I walked for a while, just trying to listen. I figured if anyone was pursuing me, I’d hear them coming. But the more I walked, the more a new sound filled my ears. It sounded like a roar, a droning and endless roar.
Fiv
e or ten minutes later, I emerged from the trees to a spectacular scene. The waterfall I’d glimpsed earlier was just a few feet away now, looming over a tower of flat rocks. The waterfall and the river below cut a path through the land, creating a deep ravine that stretched as far as the eye could see. I walked to the edge for a better look at the river hundreds of feet below. The distance to the other side of the ravine was surprisingly close, almost close enough to cause a man think he could make the leap across, but he’d have to be a fool to try. To my left some rocks had somehow landed atop each other in a stair-like structure that led up to the waterfall. I followed them, feeling the heat of the sunbaked rocks as I climbed. The heat was so intense my clothes were almost dry already. At the top was a single flat rock, nearly fifteen feet wide and just as long, that was the perfect spot to view the waterfall and the ravine below. From here, I was mere feet from the waterfall, and its sun-colored spray cooled me as I stood, taking it in. It was loud. So loud it was nearly impossible to hear anything except the droning roar of the falls. I moved to the edge of the flat rock and looked down. A narrow ledge lay directly below me, about ten feet or so away. It couldn’t have been more than three feet wide. I wondered if it would be enough to break someone’s fall or if the force of the impact would just carry a person on over, toward the bottom of the ravine and an almost certain death.
A wind blew from behind me, strong enough to make me fear that I might be about to find out.
Enough of this. I needed to call Ronnie and figure out how we were going to get out of here.
15
We got out without further incident. I skirted the interior of the fence that ran around the school grounds until I made it out to the gate, where Ronnie picked me up. We used a call box to contact Mindy at the front gate. She didn’t seem to know about my second-floor leap and let us out, wishing us a great day. The gate swung open and we pulled away, free of the school. Immediately I felt myself relax a little. I’d been too pressed while on the property to truly appreciate it, but there was something deeply troubling about the school and its students. Somehow I had felt their despair while inside.
Ronnie chattered the whole way home, but I was barely listening. Instead I spent the ride trying to process what I’d seen on Blevins’s computer. First and foremost was the discovery of Edward Walsh, son of Jeb. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised Jeb’s son was at a reform school, but it still seemed meaningful. Anything Jeb Walsh was connected with needed to be scrutinized carefully. Not that Blevins’s connection wasn’t enough to keep me interested.
Still, I couldn’t help but think I was missing some major pieces of information. It was like putting together a puzzle, but you didn’t know what the puzzle would show because too many pieces were still missing, and each new piece seemed to suggest a completely new puzzle rather than fitting into the current one.
As Ronnie continued to talk (he was on to the band now, telling me again how they were going to play their first gig in a few weeks at Jessamine’s), I ran through what I knew for sure:
A man had been shot in my yard. His name was Joe. He looked to be in his midtwenties, which meant he would have been at the school about seven or eight years ago.
He’d clearly been coming to see me, most likely to hire me. But for what? Could he have wanted me to investigate the Harden School all along?
And why had the letter warned him to stop pursuing his course of action? The “course of action” had to be coming to me, didn’t it? Was that what Blevins had wanted him to stop? Now that I knew about Jeb’s connection to the school, I wondered if he wasn’t the “powerful force” the letter mentioned.
This last piece might have been the most intriguing, suggesting a complex and vast picture that could actually mean something good for this whole county if I could assemble it and use it to somehow bring Walsh down.
What else?
There were the notes on the computer I’d found in the classroom. I couldn’t help but think complaints were pretty commonplace at the school if Blevins kept such detailed notes on them. Then there was the part about Jeb’s ex-wife eventually being referred to Argent. What was that about?
“You ain’t been listening to a damn word I’ve been saying, have you?”
“Huh?” I realized we were almost to Ronnie’s place. The old church was in sight.
“I was telling you about the weird stuff I witnessed in front of the school.”
“What weird stuff?”
Ronnie blew out a long sigh. “Jesus H. Christ, Earl, you are as bad as a child sometimes. You mean to tell me you ain’t heard none of what I was saying?”
“I heard … some of it,” I said.
“About the band?”
“Oh, I got that.”
“So where did you stop listening?”
“Right after you talked about the band.”
He gave me a sharp look as if to say he knew I was lying, but he’d let it go for the moment.
“So, when I got in the truck and started to pull off, there was some kid standing there. He had a Weed eater and was working on trimming the grass near the driveway. He waved me down. I wasn’t going to stop, but I swear he was going to just let me hit him if I didn’t, and well, you know I already done time for that.” He stopped to snort a bunch of snot up into his nose and wiped some leaking out on the back of his hand, which he promptly rubbed on my seat. I said nothing, not wanting to delay where this was going even a little bit.
“Anyway, I stopped, and the kid kills the Weed eater and comes over to the window, motioning for me to roll it down. It takes me a minute to figure out your truck, but I get it down and he leans inside. ‘Mister,’ he says. ‘Yeah?’ I say. He gives me this look, all puppy-dog eyes, not what you’d expect from a boy in a place like this, and asks me to take him with me.”
I grunted, not surprised. I’d gotten the definite sense, despite all Harden’s victory photos of changed lives hanging behind his desk, that the reality was a lot messier and didn’t lend itself to being captured inside a snapshot.
“I told him that was a no-go, but he didn’t want to hear that for an answer. He reached in the damn truck, Earl. He grabbed my arm and started begging me.”
“Jesus. Did he say why he was so upset?”
“He was crying, saying something about the Indians and his sister.”
“Indians? His sister? None of that makes sense.”
“It was fucking crazy.”
“So what happened?”
“I saw the front door to the school open up. That smiley-faced doctor asshole came out in a dead sprint, shouting at the kid to stop. The kid let go of my arm and fell down on the grass crying. I drove on off.”
“You think Blevins noticed I wasn’t in the truck with you?”
“Maybe not. He didn’t get too close.”
We made it to the church, and Ronnie eased my truck across the creek. I saw Rufus standing out beside his firepit, looking forlorn. He wore his overalls but no shirt underneath. He was sweating, and I saw he’d been working in the small garden near the cemetery.
“That asshole was up all night last night. My first night back, I would have liked to get some sleep, but no. He was out here, rummaging around in the garden, splashing in the creek.”
“Give him a break, Ronnie. Something’s up with him.”
“I’ll say.”
Ronnie parked my truck at his place. His bandmates were gone and the studio still stood unfinished. Ronnie seemed a little down about it, but I reminded him they had a gig coming soon, whether it was finished or not.
“Indians and his sister?” I said again. “Anything else you can remember?”
Ronnie lit a cigarette and sucked on it like it held the very essence of life.
“Nah, but he was scared of something. More scared than anybody I’ve seen in a while. I don’t know what’s going on there, Earl, or why you can’t talk about it, but you gotta do something to help them boys.”
I knew he was right. W
hat I didn’t know was what to do next. The puzzle was laid out, but too many pieces were still missing, leaving huge chunks of nothing at all.
16
The previous night, unbeknownst to me, Rufus had not fallen asleep in the chair at all. Instead, he’d risen silently, finished the last of his whiskey, and headed for the old church.
Rufus didn’t mind walking. He’d been doing it since he’d been blinded almost twenty years now. Sometimes he lost his way, but it happened less and less these days. He couldn’t explain it exactly. People said he had a sixth sense. Over the years, he’d come to think they might be right. In the beginning, he’d just pretended to have a sixth sense, using tricks and information people didn’t know he had to fool them, to create a kind of persona, but after a while those tricks had become a part of who he was and he was able to skip some of them or not even realize he was using them. Or hell, maybe he’d just taught himself how to be psychic, how to “know” what was there without being able to see it. He wouldn’t rule it out. Not in this crazy world.
He made it home without incident, still angry, still out of sorts over the tingling he’d felt the previous two nights and his inability to even drink himself to sleep, so he decided he’d do the one thing that never failed to relax him. He found the creek bank and stripped out of his overalls and briefs. He shrugged off his T-shirt and tossed it on the ground where he felt like it would stay dry. Now, totally naked, he reached for the water with one of his feet, letting the sharp coldness sting him with the knowledge that his body would soon adapt.
Slipping his entire body into the creek, he felt the water engulf him and lift him, creating a kind of dark balance where all things could be internalized and held. Somehow he felt the stars, their pull. Sometimes that happened, especially when he was in the creek, no clothes to separate him from the wider world. Being blind helped him feel a part of things, as if he were any other living organism that lacked vision but still possessed a deep connection with these dark hollows: a tree, a rock, a creeping vine, hell, even an old shack like Ronnie’s place across the creek. Rufus believed if something had been in one place long enough, if it had heard the rain and the thunder and the swelling of crickets and the lonesome night birds, that thing—be it house or fence or bone—became something else. That it too became a part of these mountains’ great and secret history.